If you’re a young woman who’s in a bit of a financial pinch, becoming an egg donor might seem like an easy, painless way to make some fast cash.
But the emotional and physical cost is much more than what these egg donation centers let on — so much so that the executive director of the Center for Bioethics, Kallie Fell, thinks these young women desperately need to steer clear.
“You have to start with thinking about what kinds of women are targeted to become egg sellers,” Fell tells Allie Beth Stuckey on “Relatable.” “These women are young, typically between 20 and 30 because those are our fertile years, that’s when we’re healthiest, our eggs are healthiest, our egg quality and quantity are the best,” Fell explains, calling the advertisements targeting these women “slick.”
“‘Free tanning sessions,’ ‘pay for spring break,’” Fell mimics. “Often, too, the advertisements will list a higher amount than what they’re often given, because a woman might answer an advertisement and say, ‘Oh, I saw an advertisement for X amount.’ But then she might find out that she’s not quite what they’re looking for.”
The women are also targeted for their empathy, as they believe they don’t need their eggs at that moment and would love to help out a family in need.
“Their altruistic intentions are exploited,” Fell says, and Stuckey couldn’t agree more.
“I mean, it sounds like the song ‘Fancy’ by Reba McIntyre. I mean, she’s talking about being a young prostitute because her mom is sending her out to help pay their bills. This is not sex, but it is selling your body for money, sometimes for desperation,” Stuckey says.
“And not just your body,” Fell says, “You’re not just putting your health at risk, but you are in essence, as an egg seller, sperm seller, you are giving away your future child that is your genetic material that will make a future child. And I think that young women don’t always think that through.”
“You are willing to give up your own child to someone else, and you have no idea how that child will be raised,” Stuckey agrees.
However, it’s not just the future of the child or the “slick” advertising targeting young women that bothers Stuckey and Fell — but the fact that the advertising does not include the known health risks to the young women they’re targeting.
“In nowhere on them do they include the known risks or even the statement that we don’t know what the risks are,” Fell explains, noting that she’s been speaking with an “egg seller” who’s trying to file a class-action lawsuit in Canada for the physical harm she experienced.
“She just talks to me about how she called the clinic with pains, complaints of shortness of breath, and other side effects, and instead of talking to a doctor, she talked to a coordinator who just reassured her that it was normal. She never actually saw a physician or a provider of medical care until she was sedated on the table, ready to collect her eggs,” she continues.
“These advertisements are very flowery, they use very cunning and slick language, and once they’re exploited for their eggs, they’re put on high doses of hormones and medications that have long-lasting side effects,” she says.
In a film for the Center of Bioethics and Culture, the stories of these women who were harmed are told — and they face everything from strokes to ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome to losing their own fertility.
“And those are just kind of immediate risks. We don’t know what happens to these women long-term, their risk for cancer later, or their children,” she adds.
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